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About ten couples have a Muslim wedding in the Czech Republic every year, Vladimir Sanka, director of the Islamic Centre in Prague, has told CTK, adding that most of the couples are foreigners but there are also Czechs who have adopted the Islamic faith.

For a Muslim marriage to be legal, the couple must have a civilian wedding first, Sanka said.

Muslims were registered as a religious group in the Czech Republic only in 2004, but the state has not yet granted special rights to them, that Christians and Jews, for example, enjoy.

The special rights include the right to establish schools, assist in prisons, military and hospitals, and conclude legal marriages.

Religious groups can apply for granting the special rights ten years after their official registration. They have to submit 10,000 signatures of adult supporters of the group who have permanent residence in the Czech Republic.

"The gaining of 10,000 signatures is unfeasible for us. We can hardly achieve this in the next decades either," Sanka told CTK.

If Muslims managed to meet the conditions, they would use the chance of concluding legal religious marriages, establishing schools and offer lessons of Islam at schools that would be interested in it, Sanka said.

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Sanka said that some 12,000 Muslims live in the 10-million Czech Republic, but only one-third of them regularly visit the country's two mosques, situated in Prague and Brno, and smaller houses of prayer.